24 March, 2014

la 1ère semaine

I'm in France. It's awesome. More posts to come... eventually. In the meantime, here's what i've been listening to this week. 

11 March, 2014

East

Here in the Muslim cemetery where three 
young boys kick a ball and
shout Hello to me
pleased with themselves
but the word to them is just aimless 
syllables leisurely
wrapped around their tongues, a checkered 
keffiyeh wrapped around 
a grandfather’s head as he sits 
drinking coffee with cardamom in a corner
of the souk. 

“You pronounce the name very well,”
the old spice seller tells me as I 
ask to buy za’atar. 

Here in the Old City where stenciled 
graffiti of the Dome of the Rock 
is painted on the walls 
along the Via Dolorosa in the 
green, white, red, black 
of the Palestinian 
flag; here where sandstone dust 
rises ghostly
in a tense marriage 
with street vendors’ voices, where 
each station of the cross is a
balm for the 
exhausted pilgrim. 

He hands me a plastic container
filled to the top. “You pronounce 
the name very well,” he says 
a second time. “You should speak
Arabic, or Hebrew.”